berkeley

If you’re looking for an opportunity to try out the Xbox One, now is your chance. Microsoft has brought the console to the Bay Area for its Xbox One Tour. The system has been in region since Nov. 8, but this week is the time when you can get your hands on it if you live in the East Bay or San Francisco.

Since “Parenthood” went on the air, we’ve praised the NBC drama for its deft and insightful depictions of family dynamics. But we’ve also knocked it at times because the show’s writers so often fail to get the essence of Berkeley.

I thought things were getting a little better: I actually heard a character the other night refer to riding BART without putting a “the” in front of it. But fellow staff writer Chris O’Brien complains about a plot line that has a young man running for Berkeley City Council. His gripe? The size and scope of the campaign is so “laughably off the mark” that it’s driving he and his wife crazy.

Here’s an open letter from Chris to the show’s producers that he posted on Facebook after the latest episode:

Dear Parenthood writers:

I would like to invite you to one day visit the real Berkeley, located in the San Francisco Bay Area. While it’s allegedly the location of Parenthood, your fundamental lack of knowledge of the place has gone beyond a distraction into outright annoyance. All shows take liberties, but the sheer laziness in this case has become unbearable at times.

The main source of the frustration is the storyline involving Bob Little running for Berkeley City Council. When he first appeared this season, my wife and I thought he must be running for some statewide office given the size of his campaign staff. But no! He’s running for Berkeley City Council! This is so painfully absurd, it has become hard to watch the show.

Bob Little appears to have at least a couple of dozen people working in his campaign office. And in one fundraiser featured in the latest episode he raised a huge sum of cash: $130,000! In one night!

Reality check: The top vote getter in the 2010 Berkeley City Council race scored 3,727 votes. The top fundraiser nabbed about $36,798. These are small town seats, at the end of the day. Big ticket fundraisers at richy-rich mansions? Just doesn’t happen.

Even if you don’t visit Berkeley this decade, you could find most of this information via a neat service on the Internet called, “Google.” In this case, you could have just made the guy a candidate for a statewide office, or U.S. House of Reps. Something where a person might actually hire a full-time campaign manager and attract interns from Georgetown and Harvard.

Love the show, but please, please, at least make some attempt to remain connected to a semblance of reality if you’re going to keep pretending these people live in Berkeley.

Long before John Malkovich made his name as one of the most versatile and ingenious actors in Hollywood, he was a star of the American stage. Now, I may be biased because I am a theater critic but I think you still see that ferocity and urgency, intense qualities that the stage demands, in his performances to this day. Certainly I expect to see the fire in this eyes when he plays a serial killer in “The Infernal Comedy” at Cal Performances this fall. Here the actor muses on his big breakthrough back in the day in Chicago, where he helped founded one of the country’s most formidable theater companies…

Crushing news today that John Malkovich, an actor I have ever so long venerated as a truly insightful artist as well as an uniquely idiosyncratic character, will NOT be giving interviews about his upcoming star turn in the delightfully grisly “The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer” at Cal Performances. Sigh! Since I have been a huge fan of the Steppenwolf-trained actor since “Dangerous Liaisons” back in 1988 and since he has certainly proved he is chameleon who can meld into any world from “Places in the Heart” and “Shadow of a Vampire” to “In the Line of Fire,” this is most disappointing. I suppose if I were rich and famous and gifted, I too might prize my private time more than my publicity gigs but this is still quite a bummer, no? Alas. For those of us always fascinated with picking a great actor’s brain, I will blog some quotes his press office provided to yours truly. Think of it as stream-of-consciousness reports from the actor’s Id. Here, the acclaimed actor holds forth on the pitfalls of celebrity and what it’s really like being John Malkovich…

Good news for fans of “Parenthood”: NBC has renewed the Berkeley-set family drama for a second season.

The midseason replacement series starring Peter Krause and Lauren Graham debuted shortly after the Olympics and has built solid, if not scintillating, ratings ever since.

“It’s gratifying that ‘Parenthood’ continues to garner critical acclaim and is generating highly positive reaction from viewers, thanks to the fearless creativity of its producers and the extraordinary performances delivered by its ensemble cast,” NBC U entertainment chief Angela Bromstad said in a statement.

Now that “Parenthood” has a new lease on life, maybe its writers can start infusing it with more of a Berkeley vibe. Though the show isn’t actually shot in the East Bay, it is set there, but doesn’t exactly “get it” when it comes to capturing the color and quirks of Berkeley. Here’s one blogger’s opinion on what the show does wrong.

Justin Timberlake and Berkeley’s Andy Samberg, the goofballs who gave us “(Penis) in a Box,” have struck again with another “Saturday Night Live” music video that is destined to become an Internet hit. It’s called “Motherlover,” and, um, let’s just say it’s their twisted version of a Mother’s Day gift. (The moms are played by Susan Sarandon and Patricia Clarkson).

I checked out The Atheon, the new installation by conceptual artist Jonathan Keats, yesterday in Berkeley by the Berkeley Public Library. You know, the art piece that has been blogged about on Boing Boing, Wired, and Discover Magazine. Pretty impressive stuff, huh?

Here’s a photo of the art piece:

Oh, you can’t see anything but windows? Let me give you a closer look.

Some of the photos, like the one pictured left of Judge Robert Rosenberg using a magnifying glass to examine a disputed paper ballot in Florida by AP’s Alan Diaz, are so iconic that I actually recognized and remembered them. Others, from photos of Abraham Lincoln (man was he tall!) to pictures of Maime Eisenhower, I had never seen before.

The fact is, AP photographers seem to have been everywhere at all times. They were there when John Hinckley, Jr. tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981. The photo in the exhibit is terrifying as Secret Service agents are on the ground nursing bullet wounds and Hinckley is surrounded by other agents, guns drawn.

There are beautiful pictures of John F. Kennedy, who was before my time, arriving in Dallas just a short time before he was shot and killed. And, of course, there are photos of the aftermath of Kennedy’s killing including a heartbreaking portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy receiving the flag that covered her husband’s casket during his funeral service.

While some of the photos were quite fun â€“ I really like the shot ofÂ Nixon andÂ Elvis together â€“ the entire exhibit reminded me how dangerous it is to be President of the United States. I spent the time returning to my car thinking about how hard of a job it is and wondering, really, why anyone would want to do it.

Stop by the exhibit if you’re in Berkeley near the UC campus. North Gate Hall is at Hearst and Euclid Avenues. Vistiting the exhibit is free and it is open weekdays fromÂ 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. untilÂ Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.

I’m at Bowzer’s Pizza in downtown Berkeley. They have two games of Madden NFL going. The crowd is raucous as fans wait for the game to come out.

There are 14 players in the tournament. To speed things along, the GameStop employees customized the games with two-minute quarters. Everyone is playing for $15 gift certificates that are awarded to the first- and second-place finishers.

But as it gets closer to midnight, I don’t know how much longer people will want to wait.

Former Cal Bear DeSean Jackson (and new Phildelphia Eagle) will grace the cover of NCAA 09 for the PlayStation 2. He joins new Oakland Raider Darren McFadden, Seattle Seahawk’s Owen Schmitt and Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan as the upcoming cover athletes. The game comes out July 15.